NAVANTIA and IBERDROLA hold event to mark delivery of first jackets for Wikinger offshore windfarm

22/07/2016

IBERDROLA and Navantia held an event today (21st July 2016) to mark the delivery of the first ‘jacket’ foundations for Wikinger offshore windfarm at the Fene shipyard where they were built by a consortium set up by Navantia and Windar.

The event was attended by the President of the Xunta de Galicia regional government, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo; the Chairman of IBERDROLA, Ignacio Sánchez Galán, and the Chairman of Navantia, José Manuel Revuelta. Before the event, the dignitaries visited the Museum of Shipbuilding at Ferrol’s Arsenal where they were received by Admiral Francisco Javier Romero Caramelo.

The delivery of the remaining components will continue throughout the month of August, successfully completing the contract signed on 18 December 2014 by the two companies. The scope of the contract included the manufacturing and delivery by barge of 29 jacket-type structures, at Fene shipyard, and 116 piles at Windar’s facilities in Avilés. The project entailed about 650,000 hours of work for the entire supply chain and the creation of about 2,000 direct and indirect jobs.

During the event, which was held at Navantia’s shipyard facilities in Fene, the two Chairmen expressed their satisfaction with the work completed and highlighted that the contract has been complied with, both in terms of quality standards and timeline.

The Chairman of Iberdrola emphasised that, through Wikinger offshore wind farm, the company has become a key business driver for its suppliers and said that “Wikinger is a flagship project for Iberdrola since it brings together the key elements of our strategy: a strong commitment to renewable energies and technological innovation, international growth and the contribution to economic development and job creation in all of the territories where we operate. We are very pleased that our suppliers are able to join our international expansion and access new markets and business.”

José Manuel Revuelta highlighted that “this contract contributes to Navantia’s positioning as a leading builder of offshore wind structures, an industry with enormous potential in Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom and Germany. It also allows Navantia to diversify its range of products whilst providing new orders to complement our shipbuilding activities.”

Electricity for 350.000 households

The Wikinger offshore windfarm, with an investment of around €1.4 billion, is being developed by IBERDROLA in the Baltic Sea, where water depth ranges between 37 and 43 metres. The site covers a surface area of about 34 square kilometres (km2), where the company plans to install 70 wind turbines, each with a unit capacity of 5 megawatts (MW), as well as an offshore substation.

By the time it is connected to the grid in late 2017, Wikinger’s 350 MW capacity will produce enough energy to meet the electricity needs of over 350,000 German households, avoiding the emission of some 600,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.

Iberdrola is supported in this project by suppliers of state-of-the-art equipment, technology and services selected through competitive international tender procedures open to companies from around the world.

Jacket specifications:

Each jacket consists of a latticework structure topped by a transition piece that will join it to the base of the turbine. The piles needed to fix the structure to the seabed are included in the scope of the agreement between Iberdrola and Navantia-Windar.